The attack of anxiety

Dealing with anxiety and everything that comes with it over the years, especially anxiety attacks, I thought that I mastered the art of dealing with the random sparks of the terrible emotions like stress or not feeling like I’m doing anything right. I learned to breathe and to take every moment one minute at a time when I felt like I was about to break down. Unfortunately, you can’t always prevent yourself from breaking down, especially if you’re already broken.

The day started out the same like any other terrible school day. I woke up, dreading getting out of bed, and as always, I arrived late to economics class. The night before I felt emotionally terrible, so I went to bed harboring emotions that I couldn’t express.

There was something different about this ‘typical’ day. When I walked into economics class, I felt like I was in a room with complete strangers. I sat right next to my best friend but she didn’t say a word to me. I was alone in a crowded room, a room crowded with all of my friends.

On the inside I felt terrible, on the outside I looked worse. I didn’t have the willpower or strength to smile. My eyes were lowered and I couldn’t even talk and no one even dared to look at me. I felt as if they were ignoring the fact that I was on the verge of breaking and at that moment I believed that no one even cared.

For economics, we had to be in groups and buy stocks. That day we were supposed to be quizzed on the stocks that we bought, and missing a couple school days, I had no clue which ones my group had. When the teacher came up and asked me which ones we had, I didn’t have an answer. With a confused face I looked at my partners for help. They didn’t say one word. They didn’t even look at me. I said, “I have no idea,” and at that moment, a rush of tears came falling down. Feeling defeated I looked to see if anyone saw me. No one looked once.

I felt as if a 20 pound red brick hit me in the chest, punctured me in the heart, and made it impossible to breathe. The overwhelming feeling of anxiety rushed through me and I felt trapped, being buried alive by everyone and everything in the world that makes me feel worthless and not good enough. I couldn’t handle holding anything back. I started to hyperventilate and shake, all I wanted to do was dig a deep hole and hide there forever. I started immediately thinking about suicide, a quick way to get rid of all of the pain. It emotionally and physically hurt and felt unbearable to go through. In my head I was screaming for someone to help me, but outside I couldn’t say one word.

When I walked in the hallway to my next class, I thought that maybe if I just looked down the whole entire time, no one would see the blood shot eyes with tears streaming down my face. I was wrong. It went from no one looking at me to everyone noticing that I was breaking like shattered glass. All I wanted to do was to run away but I barely had the strength to walk.

I waited until after advisory to go to the guidance office. Luckily before that day I had already talked to the guidance counselor about how I get anxiety attacks and she told me I could come down and take a breather whenever I wanted to. I don’t think she realized how bad my anxiety attacks could actually be, and she, like every other teacher, were stunned when they saw my makeup smeared face, still crying.

While sitting in the office,  I resorted to writing out my feelings, creating many poems and a song, and that made me feel a lot better. I was visited by some teachers, a couple guidance counselors, and random people that would notice that something was wrong. When that was all going on, I felt like people actually did care, and that meant more to me than most people would think.

I was able to talk to my guidance counselor about everything. For the first time in months I was finally able to express all of my feelings to someone in person. Weight was finally lifted from my shoulders.

Anxiety attacks hit you so hard you could compare it to getting hit by a train. It has the power to completely destroy your life if you let it. It happens so fast, and you’re not warned that you’ll start to experience some serious emotional and mental damage. There’s also no easy way to deal with them once they’ve already started. All you can do is breathe and tell yourself that you’re okay.

I’ve had many anxiety attacks in my lifetime, but none were as awful to go through as that one. No other anxiety attack has affected me so much either. For weeks I couldn’t stop thinking about that day.

A couple weeks later after the incident, I started to take medication for my anxiety and I have not had an anxiety attack since. That day turned my life completely upside down and I don’t think I’ll ever forget the emotional pain I felt. I can’t change my past, nor my circumstances, but I have moved on from this experience and no longer let this memory effect my life.

**** this was created for my college writing paper class. This was my significant event essay.